NJPAC's Founding President and CEO Announces Transition to New Leadership Role

NEWARK, N.J., Oct. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Founding President and CEO of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Lawrence P. Goldman, announced today that he will be stepping down at the end of the fiscal year (June 30, 2011) after twenty-two years at the helm of the nation's sixth largest performing arts center in Newark, New Jersey.

Goldman will assume the presidency of the newly created NJPAC Development Corporation, which will be responsible for advancing NJPAC's real estate development mission and initiatives. Among his priorities will include completion of One Theater Square, the 1.2 acre, forty-four story, mixed-use residential building adjacent to the Arts Center announced earlier this year. One Theater Square is a keystone in longstanding efforts to bring the environs around NJPAC to life as a vibrant live-work-play urban space. The Arts Center additionally controls two other development sites and Goldman will be focusing on identifying appropriate usages, partners and funding for each of them.

"Anyone who knows me also knows that I view my role in creating and leading NJPAC as the privilege of a lifetime," said Goldman. "What started out as a job became my life's work. At the risk of sounding like Lou Gehrig, I consider myself the luckiest person anywhere."

"My gratitude goes far and deep to our State's business and public leaders, like Bill Marino, Art Ryan, Roy Vagelos, Ray Chambers, and so many other civic champions who are truly the foundation of NJPAC. The spotlight has often been mine, but the true credit is theirs."

"For years, Larry Goldman has deservedly and very generously shared credit for NJPAC's success with a large cast of volunteer leaders, management, staff and supporters," said William J. Marino, Chairman of the Arts Center's Board of Directors and Chairman, President and CEO of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. "But an organization is only as good as its leader. And in Larry Goldman, NJPAC has had one of the best."

"The Board is enormously grateful for Larry's two decade-plus devotion to building a world-class and community-conscious performing arts center in New Jersey," said Marino. "We are confident that he will leave a healthy, respected, and relevant NJPAC in his wake and are delighted he has agreed to take on a new mantle of leadership to continue his work to revitalize the State's largest and most vital city."

"It's hard to even begin to imagine NJPAC without Larry Goldman," said founding Arts Center Chairman and Chairman Emeritus Raymond G. Chambers. "His legacy is profound and New Jersey, the region and the international arts world are immeasurably better for his tireless dedication to excellence, access, diversity, and urban transformation. NJPAC has become a true institution, in no small part due to Larry's insistence that it be so. We are fortunate he will remain in Newark to bring his trademark focus and passion to the new Development Corporation. If history is any guide, we can expect great things."

"Newark is a special place, fraught with uncertainties, but also bursting with opportunity," Goldman added. "Opportunity needs agency, it needs leverage, it needs focus, and it needs nurturing. These, hopefully, will come in part from the NJPAC Development Corporation."

A search committee of NJPAC's Board is in place to select Goldman's successor.